


like real people do

by arekiras



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Canon Compliant, Domestic Fluff, Friendship, M/M, Slice of Life, but i think it's compliant, i think??? i haven't finished the s2 yet, mention of Sarah Steel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-31 10:27:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17847683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arekiras/pseuds/arekiras
Summary: “Cheer up, Mistah Steel! I’m seeing my mom tomorrow,” Rita informs him as they step onto the shuttle with the rest of the tired commuters. Juno slouches against the support rail as the shuttle jerks into motion, zipping over the burnt red sands toward the glistening Dome of Hyperion in the distance. He grabs Rita’s arm to steady her when the sudden momentum sends her tripping over his shoes.“My mom’s dead,” he grumbles, gazing into the middle distance.When Rita looks to Peter for help, he only shrugs. “I never knew my mother.” She narrows her eyes and huffs, looking out over the face of their mostly dead planet with a dull glare.





	like real people do

**Author's Note:**

> ahhhhh first fic for tpp so i don't rlly have the characters down yet! but i'm hoping to write a bunch more for these assholes. find me @autisticjuno on tumblr!  
> (also thanks to ali @spacemancharisma for reading over this for me!!!!!)

Rita practically bounces through the spaceport, her sequined orange carry on bag banging against her calf with every other step while Juno drags both of their luggage along behind. 

“Mars: what a dump! I’ve missed it,” she throws her arms wide, nearly clobbering a teenager heading in the opposite direction. Juno groans, but Peter links his arm with hers and leads them toward the shuttle that will carry them back to Hyperion City. 

“Oh yeah, you two go ahead, I don’t need a hand or anything,” Juno says to the backs of their heads. 

“I did offer...” Peter begins to say, but then realizes Juno has already committed to being annoyed and leaves it be. He’s been grumpy since Neptune, most likely about returning to Mars after so long away. 

“Cheer up, Mistah Steel! I’m seeing my mom tomorrow,” Rita informs him as they step onto the shuttle with the rest of the tired commuters. Juno slouches against the support rail as the shuttle jerks into motion, zipping over the burnt red sands toward the glistening Dome of Hyperion in the distance. He grabs Rita’s arm to steady her when the sudden momentum sends her tripping over his shoes. 

“My mom’s dead,” he grumbles, gazing into the middle distance.

When Rita looks to Peter for help, he only shrugs. “I never knew my mother.” She narrows her eyes and huffs, looking out over the face of their mostly dead planet with a dull glare. 

 

“Go- _ lly _ , Mistah Steel, it’s lunch, not a funeral,” Rita bumps her hip against Juno’s as they walk up the street toward the small diner Rita’s mother had picked for lunch. As soon as they arrived at the hotel the previous evening, Rita had been all too happy to call her mother and tell her that she’d be bringing two guests on their lunch date. All while Juno had made increasingly violent hand gestures in her direction. Peter, as ever, only walks along serenely, as if he’d rather be absolutely nowhere else than shuffling down the crowded sidewalk at half past noon on a Wednesday. It’s a skill Juno is nowhere near possessing, and what makes Peter such a good thief: he is almost incapable of not belonging. If meeting Rita’s mother is not how he’d like to spend one of his only free days planetside, it’s impossible to tell. 

He squeezes Juno’s fingers where their hands are clasped between them and Juno smiles weakly at Rita. “Sorry,” he says, “thanks for… inviting us.” Rita grins at him. 

“Aw, you’re welcome, Mistah Steel. Anyway, my ma’s been wanting to meet you for _ ever _ . I told her you’re a real prickly type and that it would never happen, but then I was thinkin’, everyone deserves to know a great mom, even if it isn’t your  _ own  _ great mom, and yours wasn’t all that great, so it would probably be nice to bring you along,” she explains, “And you, too, Mistah Glass!” It’s added almost as an afterthought. “You’re pretty good at making Mistah Steel less prickly.” 

“I wouldn’t say that, but I’m glad you think so,” Peter replies, and Juno scoffs. Nothing could make him less prickly, and they all know it. 

A few moments later they swing into The Upper Crust, a small sandwich shop crammed between two large office buildings. At this time of day, it’s nearly at capacity, but a woman who looks exactly what Juno imagines Rita will in thirty or so years waves from a small booth wedged up against the window facing the street. Juno is grateful, claustrophobia already making his hairline bead with sweat. He slides into the booth first, across from Rita’s mother and Peter follows. 

Rita leans in and hugs her mother tightly, while her mother says things about how nice she looks and how long it’s been. They do that for so long, exchanging greetings and pleasantries, that Juno gets a tad uncomfortable, shifting in his seat. Peter rests a hand on his leg, not looking at him, and smiles winningly when they pull apart and Rita’s mother looks at them both. 

“Ma, this is Juno Steel and Rex Glass! Mistah Steel, Mistah Glass, this is my mom, Delilah!” Rita says, finally falling into the booth as they all shake hands. 

Delilah holds onto Juno’s hand for a beat, regarding him closely. Juno tries not to feel self-conscious, knowing that there isn’t much to criticize. He’s wearing a clean shirt and a pair of shiny dangling earrings, which  _ may _ have been obtained honestly, as they came from one of Peter’s many coat pockets, but that isn’t obvious. He’s traded in his old dusty tan trench coat for a black one with a better fit and higher thread count, to look less like a “private eye sore” as Peter had so gently put it. He doesn’t even have any visible bruises, which is impressive itself. He can scarcely go a week without someone socking him in the jaw. 

“Nice to meet you,” she finally says, letting him go. He feels like he passed some sort of secret test, because then she smiles. “I’ve heard quite a lot about you, Detective.” 

Juno sees Rita blushing out of the corner of his eye, and silently prays that she hasn’t heard  _ too much _ , as Rita says, “He’s not a private investigator anymore, Ma.” Juno cuts his gaze to Rita in time to see her snap her teeth together. Delilah knows that her daughter has been spending a great deal of time off planet, obviously, but it’s clear that Rita has not come up with a lie strong enough to explain this away, yet. 

Luckily, Peter cuts in. “He consults on cases with Dark Matters now. I’m afraid that’s why Juno and Rita have been spending so much time away from home,” he says. He dives deep into a pocket and draws out a badge, the same one Juno saw when they first met. He winces internally at the sight, using the same alias and story on a planet where that particular cover has already been blown is… risky. Delilah takes the badge and examines it, though Juno can tell by her expression that she wouldn’t know how to determine it as false or not. She’s merely curious: Dark Matters is something of a novelty. And if she’s anything at all like Rita, she loves novelty. 

But then she hands the badge back and rounds on Rita, who is suddenly very investing in the menu. “That sounds awfully dangerous,” Delilah says, expression sharp on Rita, who looks up sheepishly. 

“I was gonna tell you! But, I mean, it’s  _ Dark Matters _ . Everything is  _ classified _ and I didn’t know how much I could say and the… comms… wasn’t secure!” Rita flounders, but Peter only nods seriously. 

“It is a  _ very _ tight lipped operation, Mrs. Delilah.” Juno finds himself nodding gravely also, drawn into Peter’s rouse easily. 

“Well, I suppose it can’t be worse than running down dark alleys around here,” Delilah allows, and Juno snorts, nodding. 

“I never ran down the dark alleys, Ma, that’s all Mistah Steel. Like in this stream I was watching the other day, a real detective noir thing about this femme fatale Anastasia Laurel Pierce,” and then Rita’s off, and Delilah listens like a woman who has had decades of experience in parsing Rita’s stories. Juno leans back in his seat, letting Rita’s voice wash over him like background noise, looking at Peter. He has his chin in his hand and seems to be listening also, but glances over when he feels Juno’s eye on him and smiles. 

Eventually the waiter makes their way over and apologizes for the wait, before disappearing again for almost twenty minutes to collect their drinks, and then comes back to apologize again and take their order. Rita’s mother taps her toe a bit impatiently at this, but turns to Juno. For a while he had gone by mostly unnoticed, Rita and Peter talking enough for the three of them. Not that Juno is normally soft spoken; if he were, he might have gotten less of his teeth knocked out of his head. As it is, approximately a third of them are implants. 

However, it seems that his turn to speak has arrived. “Have you lived in Hyperion City your entire life, Mr. Steel?” she asks politely, and Juno tenses despite himself. It’s a simple question, but thinking about Hyperion City at all tends to make his head hurt. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he manages. 

“What part are you from?” she presses, and Juno winces before saying, “Old Town.” 

Thankfully, the food comes after that and Peter redirects the conversation around to some completely fabricated story about Ancient Martian ruins, because Peter’s only real story about Ancient Martian ruins isn’t fit for the lunch table. 

Juno learns that Rita was initially going to be a computer scientist, and then a special effects makeup artist, and then an opera singer. After realizing she couldn’t sing at all, she started filling out random ads in the local work sites until she ended up interviewing with some police detective. 

“I was  _ not  _ drunk at that interview,” Juno insists over the rim of his drink glass. 

“You  _ were _ ! You wandered around rambling nonsense for twenty minutes, said you’d give me the job, then nearly fell over. I drove you home, Mistah Steel. Don’t you remember?” Rita says, giggling. 

“If he was that drunk, then likely not,” Peter says, nudging Juno with his elbow. Even Delilah is laughing, now, and Juno can’t help but crack a small smile. 

“Yeah, well, I had just been discharged from the HCPD, I wasn’t feeling so great,” Juno allows. 

By the time the check arrives, most of the lunch rush has cleared out. Delilah leaves first, hugging Rita tightly before turning on Juno and pulling him into a hug of his own. He tenses up from his toes to his eyebrows, but doesn’t struggle, hovering his arms awkwardly about an inch above her back until she releases him. Peter does better with his turn, patting her back and wishing her well. Once she’s gone, Rita turns on him with a grin. 

“That went real well, Mistah Steel,” she says, wrapping her hands around his arm. “You didn’t even say anything awful.” 

“Yeah, well,” Juno says, “I like to save saying awful things for the second meeting.” 

“No, you don’t,” Peter says, shrugging into his coat. 

“No, I don’t,” Juno agrees. 

“Thank you for trying, boss. I think she liked you,” Rita continues as they exit out of the building. 

“I liked her, too,” Juno says, surprised at the fact that it’s the truth. It isn’t just  _ his  _ mother that he doesn’t like. Sarah Steel had managed to poison her entire species, rendering Juno nearly incapable of tolerating any mothers at all. But he can tell that Delilah is good to Rita, and that’s enough for him. 

At the intersection before the hotel, Rita departs for a shopping trip, leaving Peter and Juno alone. “You did well, Juno,” Peter remarks at the crosswalk, taking his hand again. 

“So did you,  _ Agent Glass _ ,” Juno says, arching the eyebrow not covered by his eyepatch. 

“I spent a lot of time cultivating that persona, seems a shame to let it go to waste. Especially if it keeps Rita out of trouble,” Peter says dismissively. 

“Her mom doesn’t exactly seem the type to support a life of intergalactic crime,” Juno agrees. 

“We can’t all be police officers,” Peter replies mournfully, giving Juno a private smile as they enter the hotel lobby. 

“But we  _ can  _ all impersonate police officers,” Juno says, and is rewarded with Peter’s full laugh. 

They enter the transparent elevator, and to avoid looking at the rapidly retreating floor beneath him, Juno looks out at the Dome-tinged sky, and the barely visible red sand beyond, and realizes that he didn’t really miss the Martian view at all. The entirety of Hyperion City’s dirty laundry spreading out below him, and he’s content to leave it there to air out itself. Someone else in his apartment, his office, his car (if it hadn’t been hauled off to the dump immediately). And they can keep it. He’s happy to be so far above it now. 

“I can’t wait to get out of here,” Juno grunts, leaning his back against Peter to avoid leaning against the fragile feeling glass. 

Peter gives him a funny sort of smile, but says only, “Me, too.” 


End file.
